What do you think?

• Can positive stress be good for us?

• Do you know how to control stress?

Stress is not something you can see or touch. Yet it is there, inside, whether you recognise it or not. And the first step to controlling stress is to recognise and identify it.

There are three main techniques used for coping with stress.

1. Confront the situation: learn to recognise the situations which cause you stress and think about why they do. Remember that doing something about stress, in the long run, less stressful than doing nothing.

2. Avoid the situation: for example, it you find it stressful to work in a noisy environment, it may by possible to find somewhere else to work. It’s easy to decide which situations to confront and which ones to avoid.

3. Relax: stress causes tension and tension causes stress. Find relaxation techniques to suit you. try breathing deeply or counting to ten when you recognise a stressful situation.

Ex. 21. a) Look at the stress test below and examine each situation

carefully.

Then tick the column which reflects your feelings about each situation. Don’t think too deeply about each item. It is best to give your first impressions, your immediate feelings, to each item. Work put your total stress score when you have completed the test.

	0 no stress	1 hardly any stress	2 moderate stress	3 high stress
getting up early in the morning
foreign food
having a lot to do
speaking in public
being criticised
the sight of blood
driving
traffic jams
flying
having trouble with group-mates
bad manners
worrying about being ill
meeting new people
being assertive
being short of money
going to the dentist
having to tell a lie
living alone
crowds
travelling abroad
not being able to sleep noise

To help you understand what your STRESS SCORE means, look at the table below.

SCORES

1 – 20 You are very relaxed and can cope with most things. You’re used dealing with situations which most people fins stressful.

21 – 40 Mild levels of stress are actually good for you. If you had a stress-free life, you would probably stop having fun. but you may find it difficult to face anything out of the ordinary.

41 – 60 This may be a warning that you need to reduce the stress you feel in everyday life. You’re used to living a fairly routine life and feel stress at the idea of something new. Be careful! Stress can be dangerous.

b) Look at the situations in the questionnaire again.

Tell what situations are stressful from your point of view. How do you cope with them? tell what you’ve used to.

I’m used to speaking in public.

I’m used to traffic jams.